Case Study – Effective Delegation
Assume you are the team leader for a team composed of six staff members. On your team, you have two seasoned registered nurses, one registered nurse who is floating to your floor from another medical unit, one certified nurse aide, and one new graduate registered nurse who has been on your unit for 3 weeks. You have assigned six of the unstable patients to the two seasoned nurses. One of the patients is scheduled for colon resection this morning. One patient, who is a post–right lobe thoracotomy, is scheduled for discharge and will need discharge teaching. One diabetic patient is postoperative day 1 from appendectomy, continues to be nauseated, and is on a patient-controlled analgesic. The remaining patients are currently stable and require minimal assistance.;
Instructions:
- Read the Case Study above, and then answer the following questions:
- What patient should you assign to the float nurse?
- Which patient or patients should you assign to the new graduate nurse?
- Why did you make these assignments?
- What tasks could you delegate to the certified nurse aide?
- Think back to when you were a new graduate. Did you find it difficult to delegate certain tasks? To whom did you turn for support?
